[Eric L. Walstad, on Sat, 01 Apr 2000] :: I couldn't find any info on LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Can you point me in the right :: direction? Once again, this is not a Zope question. I hesitate to get into this, because this is a (busy) Zope list, not a Unix system administration list. Also, because, like all things Unix, there are numerous ways to approach this and all Unices are a little different in this regard. So I'll confine this to the Linux case and also to my own preference. I'd encourage you to find out more on your own, in order to have the greatest flexibility. There are newsgroups for this subject. LD_LIBRARY_PATH (load library path) is a shell environment variable. As you may know, you have some built-in variables such as HOME and PATH. Others, like TERM, are not built in, but are so common that they are likely to be in your environment by virtue of being set in /etc/profile or elsewhere. It's A Good Idea to find out where all of yours are coming from. Any variable can become an environment variable. In the particular case of Linux, your default shell is Bash. In Bash, unlike csh and descendants, putting a variable in the environment entails defining and then exporting it. Doing so would be useless unless some program actually looks for that variable in the environment. In the case of LD_LIBRARY_PATH, that program is ld. If you haven't done so already, type 'man ld' and 'man ld.so' ld.so has the job of searching for shared library files. /etc/ld.so.conf contains a list of directories it searches. By default, ld.so always searches /lib and /usr/lib, regardless of the contents of ld.so.conf. Usually, there's no reason to modify ld.so.conf and many seasoned sysadmins will tell you to never modify it. Use LD_LIBRARY_PATH instead; that's what it's for. Type 'export' from the bash shell without arguments to see what environment variables you have right now. This is generally a good first step, for reasons I'll explain in a moment. In the Linux case, you can set and export LD_LIBRARY_PATH from the shell prompt, prior to any compilation attempt. LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/foo:/bar:/spam:/eggs export LD_LIBRARY_PATH For other variables, you may find that 'export' reveals that you already have a path in your environment and you may choose not to tromp on it. In that case, you can append to it: varname = varname:/extrastuff If you want a permanent repository for this (if bash is your shell), $HOME/.bash_profile is the place. /etc/profile is looked to first for all users, but your HOME environment takes precedence in this search. :: Thanks for the pointers! I still think the mailing lists are the best :: resource! Why, because it's easier for you? Expect to eventually get flamed if you: !. Don't RTFM. 2. Post off-target questions.